BizFancy

While I have many content based sites, making money from Adsense or CPA ads or whatever, I thought it might be prudent to explore why my most successful sites became that way. Exactly what tactics did I deploy in terms of link building or other promotions… let’s find out.

Site #1

This was and still is my most successful site to date. It makes money from Adsense and another ad network. This one site has made me 5 figures a year for the last couple years. I guess it isn’t too much of a surprise, as this is the site I put the most time into. Whereas with some sites, I put in an hour or maybe a few hours into creating and refining the content, with this site I probably spent 25 or 30 hours on content creation over the span of a few weeks. I guess because the subject was one I was passionate about and interested in, in fact, its something I do quite often, that it didn’t seem like hard work at the time. It seemed very much like a true labor of love.

As far as the promotion, I recall that once I launched it, I did several things:

Wrote an article for distribution – This was an extensive how-to type article, nearly 1000 words long. It took a couple hours to write it, but it paid off. I posted it on my site first, then I submitted it to EzineArticles.com and the other major article directories. It was picked up and posted by quite a few niche sites.

Niche Directories – I submitted to several niche directories that specialized in the topic. None of which required any fees. Though one did require a reciprocal link, which I provided.

General Directories – I submitted to Yahoo Directory, since the site was non-commercial. Though it never got in. I also submitted to DMOZ, but it did not get in by my submission. Instead, a few months later, an editor added the site to a different DMOZ category. Interestingly, the DMOZ editor added an internal page of the site. I also added the site to JoeAnt and GoGuides as an editor.

Social Sites – I also submitted the site to Digg and StumbleUpon and a few other social news and bookmarking sites. Though it was a manual submission, not automated, so it was just a few.

RSS Submission – The site has an RSS feed, which I submitted to some RSS directories, like Technorati.

That’s pretty much all I did at launch. I did a few more updates after that, adding another section and updating a few pages. A few months later, I submitted to a few more trusted general and niche directories, created a Squidoo Lens with unique content and contextual links and did another article distribution.

Not long after, it had achieved good rankings on MSN and then on Google for a very competitive phrase. At this point, I stopped doing any promotion, as from my stats, I could see that it was naturally gaining excellent links every single month, often every single day. The quality of the content and the time I put into it paid off big time. The site was mentioned by a major newspaper, was site of the day on a local newscast, was included on About.com as a resource, it was mentioned by people (not me) as a resource on Yahoo Answers, eHow and sites of that nature. Pretty soon it gained blogroll links on major niche blogs.

I really haven’t done any promotion at all in the last couple years and it just keeps gaining traffic!

Lesson Learned —

Putting the time and passion into your content PAYS OFF, eventually. When you have great content, you don’t need to build links or send out press releases or articles or spam other sites with comments and profile links. You get superb quality links, naturally, for free, without any work!

Site #2

This is a bit of a different story than site #1, however, many days, I make more money with this one than site #1, with about a tenth of the traffic!

With this one, I took shortcuts, and perhaps I got lucky. It is a simple 10 page site that is based around an up and coming health product. I hired a (good) writer to create articles about 10 different keyword phrases on the topic, then added them to the site. I properly SEO’d it, of course, but didn’t go overboard. The phrases were not very competitive. All in all, I spent no more than an hour setting up this site. The promotion I did:

Social Bookmarking – I bookmarked it using OnlyWire, once.

Link Wheel – I used 6 unique articles to create a link wheel at 6 of the top web 2.0 sites, including WordPress.com, Squidoo, Quizilla and others.

This is it. That’s all I did, because I had to move on to another project right away.

I don’t know if I lucked out or what, but the site gained the #1 listing on Google for the exact phrase I optimized for with the link wheel. It still has that #1 listing, in fact, it has an indented listing for it.

I have added a few additional articles over the last year or so, but that’s it.

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Interesting, isn’t it? One thing I will say though, neither of these sites were built using WordPress as the CMS. Both sites are built in HTML. I don’t know why, but I don’t have as much luck with content based sites made in WordPress.

One of the most important aspects of creating content sites is choosing the right keywords and phrases to target. You want to choose phrases that are actually searched for on the major search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo, but you also want to choose phrases that aren’t insanely competitive. So, forget that #1 ranking for “quilting”, it brings traffic that is too broad anyway. Just what kind of quilting are they interested in? Do they want to learn about it? Do they want free patterns? Do they want to buy stuff related to quilting? Who knows. This is why we want to research and target what they call “long tail” phrases. Long tail phrases are simply multi word phrases, usually at least a keyword or two or more tacked onto the main phrase. So, if we’re looking for long tail keyword phrases for our subject of hand quilting, here is what comes up:

free hand stitch quilting patterns
quilting by hand
hand quilting thread
free hand quilting designs
quilting hand stitching
dot to dot hand quilting designs
hand quilting templates
hand quilting needles
free hand quilting patterns
hand quilting how to
hand quilting class az
hand quilting without a hoop
hand quilting techniques
designs hand quilting
hand quilting instructions
used hand quilting frame

As you can see, these are generally 3 to 5 words total each. Each of these phrases gets traffic, not substantial traffic like the simple phrase “quilting”, but the reason we target these phrases is that it’s relatively easy to rank for them since there are far fewer competitors. In some cases, you’ll find few if any competitors targeting some phrases that actually get traffic. These phrases are easy to rank for and mean free traffic for you! You’ll want to compile a nice list of as many long tail phrases for your niche as you can find. You will then use these phrases to optimize your website pages. In some cases, you’ll even want to create a special page to target certain phrases. Here are some handy tools to use for finding long tail phrases for your site (each has a free option or trial, but the paid versions are worth the money if you can afford it):

KeywordDiscovery

WordTracker

NicheBot

Don’t underestimate to importance of choosing a decent host for your website. If you put alot of time and work into your website, and your site is inaccessible to your visitors, then it’s all a waste. Here are two good choices for a budget host to start your empire.

In my experience, you don’t have to spend a fortune to get solid hosting for your website. I like the following hosts and packages:

ResellerZoom – You can start off with the Budget package that is $6.95 a month. Generally solid and decent support. I have had 20 sites hosted on a Budget plan for almost 3 years, and am still pretty satisfied overall. A good budget choice.

HostGator – HostGator has a good reputation. I wouldn’t hestitate to use their Baby plan which allows unlimited websites for $7.95 a month. If you’re only going to build one site, then go with the Hatchling plan for just $4.95 a month. I don’t have any personal experience with this host however, but have heard good things.

I’m going to start off this blog with the #1 way I make money online. That is, creating niche content websites. I have several websites that make me thousands of dollars each year. I won’t share my niches, but I’ll tell you how to find your own, create your content and even promote the site. This will be a multi post subject.

Keep in mind that I don’t bother with making junk websites, loaded with scraped content or PLR articles or other people’s content. I’m talking about making a real content website, with 100% or close to 100% unique content. A site that will take longer to get off the ground and make money, but will make money for years and years. If you don’t plan on putting some work and time into your website, then don’t even bother.

Here we go with part 1…

The first thing you need to do is find a niche. This is easy for me… I simply go with what I know and love. Do you enjoy quilting? How about crafts? Or maybe you are a connoisseur of cigars or wine or Maserati’s or a local college team or whales or the old West or whatever. Think about what you like, what you enjoy, what is your passion? First and foremost, pick what interests YOU. This is very important. If you pick a topic that interests you, then the content and care you put into the site because of your passion for it will come through to your visitors, and that will pay off in the long run. It doesn’t matter how niche it is, how specialized a topic, trust me, if you have a passion for it, chances are that there are other people out there in the vast Internets that are also interested in it.